Coffee growers help reforest Mozambique's Mount Gorongosa

With Mozambique's new peace agreement signed earlier this month, farmers on Mount Gorongosa are dramatically scaling up coffee production.

Four hundred 400 Mozambican farmers are producing coffee that earns them incomes while at the same time restores the mountain's rapidly eroding rainforest. The coffee project is part of Gorongosa National Park's innovative efforts to boost the incomes of people living around the park as well as revitalizing the environment.

A woman carries harvested coffee beans on her head at a coffee plantation. AP

Mount Gorongosa rises 1,863 meters (6,112 feet) above Mozambique's central plains and the tropical hardwood forest of its upper rainy regions is being stripped by local farmers who want to grow maize. Coffee is a crop that can stop that deforestation, say park experts. Shade-grown coffee shurbs produce better tasting coffee beans, so the trees are planted among indigenous trees.

Associated Press